Some simple research and reasonable assumptions will readily provide an answer.
Howard, Hibbert, Osman, Pienaar and Stones were paid a combined basic salary of £183,000 a week.
Gueye, Stekelenberg, Williams, Bolasie and Kone were paid a combined basic salary of £187,000 a week. I'm going to suggest their salaries have increased by 25% taking the combined figure to £233,000.
Lukaku is set for a £55,000 a week increase. I'm going to assume Barkley receives the same increase and Baines a smaller increase of £25,000.
I'm assuming we've budgeted for 3 additional players say at a 'moderate' £75,000 a week each.
That gives a combined wage increase of £406,000 a week ignoring any increases in any of the other 25+ professionals in the club.
That equates to £21,000,000 increase in wages, 3 times the permitted increase given our non broadcasting revenues are going to be flat.
So in the absence of any realistic way of increasing revenues by over £14 million a year how were we going to achieve it without creating a significant trading profit from a player sale?
Btw if we achieve two of our main targets in the window those figures will increase significantly, probably by another £5 million at least.